I'm not a fan of racing games. I am, however, a fan of chaos and destruction, which is exactly what the Burnout series has brought to the table. Burnout 3 was my first experience in what could be the most entertaining racing game of all time. Burnout Revenge is back with some new features and a few major changes that may or may not thrill fans of the previous versions of the game.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Burnout, let me tell you a little bit about it. Burnout is a very well done arcade-style racer that encourages road rage, crashing, and general mayhem-so much so that you are actually rewarded with boost for wrecking your opponents. Burnout Revenge is packed with different types of gameplay, which definitely gives the game a nice variety. The single-player World Tour/Career mode is where you will spend most of your time. It allows you to unlock cars and events to play. The game also sports a multiplayer mode and is fully Live Enabled for online action.

In World Tour, you will come across a bevy of remarkably fun events that include Race, Traffic Attack, Burning Lap, Road Rage, Eliminator, Preview, and Grand Prix Race. Race is your standard first-to-cross-the-line-wins event. Make heavy use of takedowns to build your boost and slow down your opponents. Traffic Attack is a blitz through traffic to hit as many cars as you can. Hitting cars awards you damage dollars and extra time on the clock to keep going. This is, by far, the best addition to the game. Burning Lap is a race against the clock, where you will be forced to drive almost flawlessly to achieve a gold medal. Road Rage is a race against time to reach the specified number of takedowns against some very aggressive AI-controlled opponents. Eliminator is a very unique event where the last-place player is eliminated each time the 30-second clock expires. Stay ahead of the pack. Preview is merely a test drive of some of the more exotic vehicles available in Revenge. Finally, Grand Prix Race is a GP series of races that you must finish with the most points to score the gold.

The actual game mechanics are almost identical to Takedown, so I won't spend much time discussing them. You have your standard controls of accelerate, brake, switch views, etc. The Aftertouch and impact time did make a return. If you don't know what that is, think bullet time for cars.

EA did make a pretty major change to the way the crash mode works, so I want to briefly mention that. When crash multipliers first made their debut in Takedown, many true fans of the series felt that the crash mode had been ruined by forcing you to hit the multipliers to get a gold medal on crash events. This, in turn, removed some of the creativity in the crashes that would net you an acceptable score. The good news is that EA did away with them in Revenge; the bad news is that crash mode can get really tough now. The overall changes to crash mode are in fact positive and will definitely increase the replay value.

Another big change this time around is the ranking system. You start out as a harmless driver, and as you win medals you will be awarded stars based on your performance. These stars increase your rank and thus unlock additional areas and events in the World Tour. From what I can tell, the ranking system doesn't actually do anything other than that.

Where does that leave Burnout Revenge? In my book, the changes to Revenge make it an equally solid game when compared with Takedown. Some people will prefer the crash mode from the last game, but the addition of Traffic Attack alone makes this worth the purchase. I think everyone will enjoy this as an addition to their library.

Sep 20, 2005 | 0 comments
Chris Rasco